James,
Yes, I've seen that Snowy Egret behavior of hovering along with gulls over schools of feeding bluefish out over the open water. First saw it last year off Westport, and I've seen it 2-3 times in the past month in Stratford. It's pretty amazing that they would expend that much energy to try to get a fish morsel.
Frank MantlikStratford
--- On Mon, 7/20/09, eyeflight16 at optonline.net <eyeflight16 at optonline.net> wrote:
From: eyeflight16 at optonline.net <eyeflight16 at optonline.net>
Subject: [CT Birds] Shorebird migration begun
To: ctbirds at lists.ctbirding.org
Date: Monday, July 20, 2009, 9:32 AM
There have been some exciting things going on at Penfield Reef in Fairfield. I have been getting noisy flocks of 40+ Common Terns, with at least a third of them juveniles. Also, I have seen some very interesting behavior. There were 3 snowy egrets with the flock of terns this morning, and they would fly out from the jetty, hover over the surface of the water like a storm petrel, snatch food from the surface, and then fly bak to the jetty. They reminded me of Storm petrels or even flycatchers. Has anyone ever seen this behavior before? Also, shorebird migration has finally begun at Penfield Reef! Today, I looked out and saw my first shorebird of fall migration, a spotted sandpiper!!!
James Randall
Fairfield
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